Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday October 14, 2004 @08:00AM
from the go-get-them dept.

bblazer writes "Reuters is running a story about a new US effort to stop intellectual property theft. From the article "The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday outlined what it called its most sweeping crackdown on bootleg DVDs, fake designer goods, illegal music downloads and counterfeit drugs." It also goes on to say that media (movies and music) is highly affected, but so are products like batteries, baby food and Viagra."

You are exactly right. This has nothing to do with the benefit of others; this has everything to do with control and jobs for all the other dumbasses that can't get a job some where else.
Why is it 67% of the prison population are drug related? Obviously this shit isn't working.
Most likely someone up high got a hand out and no doing what the hand out required. Doesn't it seem more and more we are, we as in the US, are just as corrupt as IRAQ/N. Korea, except the fact that we have this illusion of freedo

If it ended think of all those poor DEA agents having to get proper jobs.

The War on Terror. Yep that's working: so far two countried fucked up and Iran's next.

Unless Iran actually has WMDs, in which case Syria is most likely next in line.

So how can we deal with counterfeiting? I know: we'll declare war on it, that always works.

Except that kind of copyright infringement which a fuss is being made about isn't counterfeting in the first place.

The US Government: the world's leading terror organisation for the last 50 years.

Whilst the US Government may have made the "top 10" since 1954 it may not have been number one for each of those 50 years. The US Government faces stiff competition from Israel, Britain, Russia and France.

The US Government faces stiff competition from Israel, Britain, Russia and France.

I'd agree with the other two, but I think you have made a mistake on Britian and France. I can't think of anything WRT to Britian, and for France the only things that come to mind are Algeria and Indo-China (later Vietnam and Cambodia). This doesn't quite compare to Russia, Isreal and the US.

Afghanistan today: Most of the people are feeling optimistic about their future after decades of war and oppression. First person to vote in the first ever democratic elections was a 19 year old woman.

Hmm...doesn't sound too fucked up to me. Oh wait, the US was responsible for it. Yep, Afghnistan is comp

Hey Mr. Wanna-be History Major, wake up!
The U.S. did not put the Taliban in power. In fact, the Taliban were not in power until 1996. Afghanistan had a democratic government after the Soviet Union left, and then in the 90s, the country went into a state of civil war, and when conditions were right - the Taliban sneaked in the door.
As for U.S. support of the Taliban, there wasn't any. Carter and Reagan supported the mujahadeen in their war against the USSR. Most mujahadeen were not radicals - they were j

Afghanistan today: Most of the people are feeling optimistic about their future after decades of war and oppression. First person to vote in the first ever democratic elections was a 19 year old woman.

That's the official line. What I've heard is that people are afraid to vote, as they expect to be killed for cooperating with the americans, Opium production is something like 70% of the world supply, and the fundie religous types (like the Taliban) are gaining power again. Call me when they're sovereign and at least halfway friendly.

Hahah, did you not pay attention to the news? There were 10 million votes counted. That does not mean 10 million voters when you've a country with a slap-dashed voting infrastructure. The situation was so messy that Karzai was actually endorsing people to vote as many times as they wanted, rather than risk losing the multiple-voters' support. Voter registration slips were on the black market.

HOW DARE THEY remove Uncle Saddam's Utopia and the Uncle Osama's paradise and replace them with eeevil capatalistic and prosperous liberal democracies! They've ruin those countries just like they ruined Japan, Germany and South Korea (luckily Uncle Kim's Eden has thus far survived).

There's no evidence that the US government has replaced anything. There has been an election in Afghanistan without the final results and there is still an absence of a traditional government.

G Dub has declared war on the UN. We are not friends with the world right now. I for one do not welcome my warmongering overlords. No one has a right to invade another country without going through the UN. We did just that and I can't believe it didn't have further extending repercussions.

I am more worried about North Korea and their very real WMDs than I am of the make-believe boogeyman Bush is conjuring up.

Trust me, with all the oil being found in Russia and Russians being the new rich, it won't be long before we are at war with THEM.

Hmmm, you are a good example of what often is wrong with the USA. How about choosing a solution somewhere BETWEEN "waging war" or "let the bad guys run rampant"? You know, not black, not white, but gray.

First post! Had to comment on this one.
I'd say that the situation in Iraq or Afganistan
is quite different from the situation in Europe in 1940s. And USA would have happily sat on their assess during the war if Pearl Harbor wouldn't have happened. Hmm... I remember even that it was Germany who declared war against USA (big mistake, should not have done it and world might be very different place now).
I'm not endorsing nazi Germany. Soviets would have crushed them by themselves in the end and taking Europe to the dark ages.

The key difference here being that Germany was *known* to be systematically killing an entire race or people and were moving onto other undesireables (foreigners, gypsies, artists, poor people, mentally ill, etc). They invaded Poland, bombed London, invaded France, and were rolling their way across Europe.

I don't know about you, but I can make a distinction between an isolated act of terrorism on US soil but a party as yet unproven, and the mass invasion of countries and genocide that was being undertaken by Germany.

I would divide your statement in two sections. First, you speak about what they did on the inside of their country. Nobody messed with them about that. They could have killed everybody in their country before others cared about them. International disputes are about international issues. In-country atrocities are easily overlooked by other countries. Like the things people from the US say about China, but they never think about messing with them. The US has now a history of using internal issues of other countries, in order to invade them and pillage what's left, and in the meanwhile showing off their power to kill people. And they call it preemptiveness, or deterrance. Smacking someone, or threats are deterrance, actually killing people by the dozen is just plain common murder.

Then you speak about their relationship with the outside, now it sounds like you are talking about the US, nowadays. The only difference with Germany is that the US has now actually more power to kill than every other nation combined, and that is why they don't get the same treatment, because in this story the US are the crazed bastards killing everybody in their way, but there's noone able to stop them.

The US don't attack France and Germany now, because it would just hurt too much for US people to bare with.

The US change at their will the governors of countries for people frienldy to them, and even CIA agents, as was the case with Noriega, who attained his power with US support, or most of LatinAmerica, where US troops trained in Panama the military death squads that killed civilians in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and most of South America in the 60's, the 70's and the 80's.

the problems prohibition creates are often worst than any problems that the drugs create. The US gave up on alcohol prohibition for this reason.

I was hoping someone would bring up that point.:) The flaw in your reasoning is that it assumes that none of the drugs currently under prohibition are worse than alcohol. This is simply not true. If you've ever met a real cocaine or heroin addict (there is no such thing as a casual cocaine/heroin "user", only "addicts"), you'd see that it is not the same thing

f you've ever met a real cocaine or heroin addict (there is no such thing as a casual cocaine/heroin "user", only "addicts"), you'd see that it is not the same thing as alcohol at all. It takes over your life.

What you're talking about here is people who are addicted to the substance. This doesn't apply at all to casual users. Now, just because you personally haven't met a casual user, doesn't mean there aren't any. I can personally think of a half dozen people who have all casually used these drugs and are

If you've ever met a real cocaine or heroin addict (there is no such thing as a casual cocaine/heroin "user", only "addicts")

This I doubt. I've seen a lot of studies that show cocaine users as being mostly casual (including our prezodent, so the rumours go), with a smaller core of hardcore addicts.

At any rate, the current witchhunt isn't helping anybody. If it were cheapa to get, then at least the addicts could blow their brains out in peace instead of dying in police raids, hanging out in prisons getting cornholed and robbing people for their next fix. Yeah, that's cold, but it makes sense from a least-harm perspective. Maybe you don't need to legalize Cocaine all the way, but it doesn't need to be this illegal - make it a $100 fine for possession and sell it at the pharmacy to addicts with a script for $2/gram. That way I don't have to worry about the DEA serving a warrant on the wrong house.

If you look historically at opiate use (heroin is an opioid, or synthetic opiate), you'll see that it very much mirrored alcohol use in our society: the majority of users were able to consume casually, and a small subset allowed themselves to become addicted.

Incidentally, opiate addiction is far less dangerous than alcohol addiction: there are few, if any long term negative consequences to an opiate addiction (as clearly evidenced by the rampant use of opiates amongst artists in the UK, many of who consumed astoundingly high levels of opiates daily and managed to live healthy, productive lives well into their 70s). Unlike alcohol, opiate withdrawal cannot kill. Unlike alcohol, opiates do not cause extreme liver and brain damage with possible dementia.

I won't speak on drugs like crack and methamphetamines, because I'm not remotely interested in them. I think that they're dangerous, but I support people's right to use them if they so choose. If education is given, people will understand the dangers associated with these drugs, and if they decide to consume them anyways, they're playing with fire. Many people partake in many dangerous and silly activities on a daily basis, but we support their right to do so (e.g. car racing?).

The only drugs that I support to be fully controlled are antibiotics, because antibiotic abuse is the only abuse where it's clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that the long-term damage caused by overconsumption will harm society as a whole instead of just the individual.

It was quite entertaining how you extrapolated so many things from my post that I never said, nor even believe.

I'm not saying that heroin is not addictive. Where did I make such a claim? Opiates can be quite addictive, and heroin is one of the most addictive drugs in this category. However, historically speaking, it is factual that in China, opium (raw opium being a mixture of opiates, primarily morphine but with significant quantities of codeine and thebaine) use paralleled the alcohol use of Great Britian. There was actually a British government study done way back that expected vastly different results, but came to this conclusion.

And *grins*... I assure you that I've never sold a single drug in my life. However, I can tell you that I've used both alcohol and opiates / opioids (morphine, meperidine, codeine, oxycodone) extensively in the past, and while I never got addicted to opiates / opioids and prefer them to alcohol, I have had problems with alcohol addiction.

I really don't understand where you get your figures in your "Let me put it plain and simple for you" paragraph. It strikes me that you made those up, but I may be wrong. I, personally, know no heroin users, but a friend of mine knows many, and the majority of them use very infrequently, and not intravenously (this would be akin to, say, funneling huge quantities of alcohol). Because of the illegality of heroin, you're unlikely to be aware of such responsible use - these people, because of the stigma attached to heroin use, are likely to keep a low profile and you'll likely never know it if you meet one of them.

Personally, I wouldn't touch the stuff, but I support everyone's right to make that decision for themselves. And I completely fail to see how I mentioned that it's okay to get addicted to heroin; I never said anything remotely resembling that. May I kindly suggest you read my posts more carefully in the future instead of blindly jumping to conclusions? I simply pointed out that many people in the past have lived their lives with roaring opiate / opioid addictions (largely laudanum, which, IIRC, is alcohol and opium or morphine) and functioned well. There are also alcoholics who function well; however, there are many more long term, dangerous, and irreversible consequences to alcohol abuse than there are to opiate abuse.

>Wow, someone is actually arguing that heroin is not addictive to most users? Geez, never though I'd see the day.

It's not. The vast majority of people who try heroin never become addicted. If you think that it is, provide some evidence to back it up.

http://www.users.on.net/~rmc/drugs.htm

"Research made unwillingly by the U.S. Army on its Vietnam War veterans showed that nearly half used heroin (95% pure), 7% of those stayed on it on return to the U.S.A. with only 1% of these being addicted. The research was forced on the U.S. Army because many soldiers claimed disability pensions on the grounds that heroin addiction is permanent and disqualifies the user from any sort of productive life. Originally the heroin was smoked until Authority clamped down and it became more cost-effective to inject.

The addiction rate for social ALCOHOL drinkers is 10% with another 5% "at risk". ("Addiction" is when stopping taking the drug leads to withdrawal symptoms not present before taking it. e.g. alcohol "Dependence" is when cessation means just returning to the previous status quo e.g. insulin.)"

>Let me put it plain and simple for you: if you try heroin once, you probably have a 75% chance of trying it a second time...

Honestly, are you getting your facts from a DARE bumper sticker, or what?

>there is no such thing as a casual cocaine/heroin "user", only "addicts"

You're either joking or are painfully naive. A person is no more likely to become addicted to either of the above than they are to alcohol, and less likely than tobacco.

http://www.ccguide.org.uk/addicts.html

>It takes over your life. It creates a dysfunctional circumstance in which the person quickly loses the ability to carry on a normal life, hold a steady job, and maintain a loving relationship with family.

I mean, the US is already a nation of drug slaves. I don't mean street-drugs, either, I mean 'legitimate, socially accepted drugs'. 3/4's of the U.S. is high, daily, anyway.

You have a fascinating statistic, but unless you're talking about some unholy combined count of antidepression medications and caffeine, I have serious doubts as to its accuracy. Do you have any lies^W damned lies^W^W statistics to point me to that you may back up your view?

Did you leart nothing from prohibition? The crimes you associate with drugs are not caused by drugs, any more than organized crime in the 20's was caused by alcohol.

Alcohol is legal, and is still the cause of a very large amount of crime. Drunk driving, assault, domestic violence, the list goes on. Drunk people are a huge hassle for police. Ask any cop, they'll tell you that crime drops off dramatically in the winter, and on rainy days, because fewer people go out drinking during those times.

I don't see anyone but Al-Reuters calling it a 'declaration of war'. The headline alone is going to cause a flame war.

It's a fair point, but these headlines usually reflect the way it was spun by the government. You have to know how press teams work - they send out the press releases to Reuters etc, then they'll call the individual journalists and put their spin on it. Because they're then first to answer any questions the journalist might have they can influence the story.

Picture the conversation like this:

Journalist: so is this a real crackdown? WIll there be resources to back it up?

on abstract concepts like "terrorism," "drugs" and "intellectual property theft"? (Recent) history has shown that things like this just do not work.

Actually it appears to work quite well. Assuming the aim is to keep various people busy and well funded. N.B. the funding goes to "both ends". So odds on the US Government is now funding "intellectual property theft". The whole idea of these "wars" is top ensure that they cannot be "won".

"The war on drugs to me is absolutely phoney, its so obviously phoney, ok? It's a war against our civil rights, that's all it is. They're using it to make us afraid to go out at night, afraid of each other, so that we lock ourselves in our homes and they get suspending our rights one by one."Bill Hicks

Oh no! They aren't going to crack down on my favorite Duraking batteries. Or maybe Dinacell?!
(For those of you unfamiliar with cheap batteries, those are real, and they are all made to look like duracell batteries)

The fundamental problem with these and all the other "war" metaphors the government has thrown around at various times (poverty, cancer, etc., as other posters have pointed out) is that war is a lousy metaphor for anything except, well, war actually.

Governments are very very good at fighting wars; the US government has had a couple of centuries of experience, and government as a social institution has had several millennia of experience, at assembling armies to go fight other governments' armies. It sucks

Seeing how the "war against drugs" and the "war against terror" went I would be quite worried if I was an american.

Yeah, especially since we are really the only ones tha suffer the casualties of these wars. Its nuts to consider that Apartheid was maintained with as many or fewer of South Africa's population in jail or prison.

For those of you that don't know almost 1% of the human population is incarcerated, its over 1% when you consider those who are on probation and parole. Land of the free and home o

They do understand this, but they also understand that in affluent societies, prices of luxury goods (such as CDs and DVDs) have a fair amount of elasticity, and thus, can be kept higher, netting them even *more* money. That is what they realise.
Government won't do too much to stop them, as higher revenues look better for the economy in general, and help keep the nation's growth looking healthy, which in turn prevents it from being eclipsed by other rising powers, and subsequently outgunned.
This is what

They are welcome to, as long as there's no underhanded tactics going on. In turn, you are free to deny them their wealth by not buying their products. But piracy, or whatever you want to call it, is wrong.

I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with a 'war on IP theft'. However, as usual, there's the question of:
- priorities... is this really the thing that law enforcement agencies should be focussing on?
- rights: are they just applying a little

And unlike drugs and terror, the politicians will never get the support they need from the masses to continue their latest favor crusade to the big cartels.

The war on terror is working because the majority of McWalmart Americans are convinced that them dirty a-rabs are just tootin' to bring their hoity toity core-anne over here and shove it down our capitalist lovin', god-fearin' country's throat.

The war on drugs worked because well-to-do soccer moms were and are scared that their Harvard-bound princesses will end up giving blowjobs for coke, or that their sons will end up slanging yayo in the hood.

What's going to be the hook for Joe Sixpack to endorse the "War on Piracy?" The fact that CD prices may rise even more? That Regal and AMC might up the price from 8.50 to 9 bucks?

Unlike the terror and drug "wars," the middle class constituents that these piggish fucks in DC need to support their endeavors will not see the importance of "waging war" on something that they do not percieve as a threat. They will not see the justice in their sons and daughters becoming someone's bitch in a maximum security prison for what amounts to petty "theft" (and yes, I know it's not really theft. But we must keep it simple for the simpletons, both on/, and in the real world).

The 60 million people who file swap "illegally" in this country cannot all be put in prison. If they try, they'll be met with protest and the backlash from the public. Becausse file swapping is such a part of our culture now that all the laws in the world won't make any difference. They've lost, rightly or wrongly.

These "IP" laws have really become like the speed laws. Your driver instructor tells you that yes, you can get fined, etc. for going 5 over the speed limit, or for putting the hood of your car over the white stop bar at traffic lights. But in reality, how much does this happen? (and spare me your "I live in a hick town where the one cop in town has a vendetta against my family so yes it happens" tales.)

Likewise, who ever gets sued for downloading a single mp3? How long will it take them to sue everyone? How long will it take them to sue enough folks to make anyone care? Will anyone care? The way I see it, I have about 8000 songs on my PC. Assuming I were a dirty pirate, and assuming they were all illegally aquired, if the RIAA came after me and demanded a 5000 dolalr settlement, I'd actually view myself as getting a pretty cheap deal, as opposed as to if I had gone through iTunes, etc.

They can't slap casual swappers with the "max fines" they advertise (250k per work,) because it would cause outrage. They're damned if they do, damned if they don't. I don't envy the RIAA at this point!

problem is that the RIAA and MPAA are too unbelieveably stupid to embrace and extend.

they could have quadrupled their profits by embracing the file trading scene. and offering right away, better than CD quality singles at less than $0.75 a track as well as gobs of "freebies" at the lower 128 kbps quality. seeding the P2P networks with their latest releases by making it look like a "unreleased bootleg" of Anton Mazumba's country styled gansta rap hit the streets, when it's simply a prerelease single from his new album "smackin' my bitches with my pickup truck".

The music people would have ate that crap up, it would have driven sales of CD's and new money churning artists higher than before.

instead they do the absolute stupidest and hairbrained thing, do everything in their power to piss off the costomers. Metallica is still hated by ex-metallica loving fans because of the backfire of that trick.

Until the MPAA and RIAA get rid of all the dead-wood that is it's leadership and replace them witrh real businesspeople that can see a trend and use it to their advantage, they will continue their current stupidity.

60 million people are a lot of people, but as many large numbers it's hard to conceptualize. To put it in contrast, in 2000 George 'Dubya' Bush got 50,456,002 votes (source: Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] ). Does that mean there are more criminals walking the streets than people who voted for the president?
When there are so many people breaking a law, isn't it time to revise the law, rather than futilely try to enforce it?

The war on drugs worked because well-to-do soccer moms were and are scared that their Harvard-bound princesses will end up giving blowjobs for coke, or that their sons will end up slanging yayo in the hood.

Meanwhile, people like me are getting blowjobs from Harvard princesses and buying yayo at record low rates from their brothers. Vive le guerre!

That's how America operates, isn't it? We don't solve problems, we declare war on them. Problems with poverty? A war on hunger. Don't like narcotics? A war on drugs. Not much reason at all? A war in Iraq. And now, a war on piracy.

Solving problems... hard. Declaring war, good soundbite.

And people wonder why our homicide rate is so high. Every day you get to see the most horrific death scenes on network TV, but god forbid the children might see a breast, it's like they never breast fed? Huh?

There is always a catch 22 when dealing with this type of issue. By researching how to make the drug or tool utility music or whatever it maybe it costs money and time. But you make money at the end of the tunnel. The profit margins are always dropped when there are counerfiet/fake clones etc around. BUT if the initial product was cheaper more people could afford the goods and there would be less demand for clone/fake items and the cycle wouldnt be as dramatic.

Sigh... When the US tried to stop the use of alcohol early in the 20th century, did that actually stop the use of alcohol? No! And in addition, there
was a lot of crime, because people tend to go to great lengths for what they want.

When the US declared the War On Drugs, did that stop the use of drugs? No! And in addition, there was a lot of crime, because people tend to go to great lengths for what they want.

When the US declares a War on Copyright Infringement (not: theft!), will that stop the infrigement of copyright? No! And there will be a lot of crime, because people tend to go to great lengths for what they want.

Waging a war on something does not solve the issue. Never by itself. An issue can only be solved by looking for the motives that people have for doing things.

Ask yourself: Why do people use alcohol, why do people use drugs, why do people download material from the net? Only when you know people's motives, you can start to change things, because if you don't understand the motives, and just wage a war, you deny people something that they want...

... and there will be a lot of crime because people tend to go to great lengths for something they want.

There is a Burger King/AOL advertisement about kids getting pulled over by a cop. They were essentially asked if the music they were listening to was stolen.

Will this be our future? Will an MP3 player in a car give probable cause to search for more stolen goods?!

I've always thought the real intent of drug laws were to give the government the ability to arrest anyone for any reason at any time. That's because there is no victim to testify against the person, only the cop who says he saw the person with drugs. And because it allegedly happens directly in front of the cop, the government doesn't have to worry about the person coming up with any alibi defense.

I think that copyright enforcement will become the new "victimless" crime of choice.

The world has changed. Move On. Stop trying to recoup the costs of creation and promotion by building it into the cost of creation. Find some other way to profit from the works of others, for the method you are using now is nearing the end of its usefulness. You can sue every single person that copies a movie or song over the net, but how can you sue those that do not use the net as their means of transport? As large hardisks become more plentiful, your battle becomes harder. And this is a battle you will ultimately lose - the more you fight, the more costly it will become. For the people you are fighting are your reason for exisiting. If you put them in jail, take all of their savings, or alienate them, you might as well disappear - for they will never purchase your products again.

This is bad. This a prelude to the RIAA and the MPAA no longer having to pay lawyers to sue their customers, instead getting the US Taxpayers foot the bill and the DOJ to be the 'bad guys'. The DOJ gets to claim to be "tough on crime" and call for more money for more agents.

There are "imitations," and then there are fakes. Many imitations are legal and look like the more expensive competition, but don't claim to be the same: sunglasses, jeans, cologne, etc. Dynacell batteries, etc

Then there are fakes, products that are make to look like the real thing, and labelled as the real thing, but are often vastly inferior quality. In many cases they are also dangerous: there have been reports of some powered products being subject to shock/fire, and even things such as children's teddy-bears which have been found stuffed with rubber bands and a bandage.

Oh, and FYI I'm Canadian, but we get the same crap sneaking in at the docks. The government here isn't declaring a "war" on the fakes, but has been paying closer attention to them.

Now, the illegitimate copy/rip of an anime movie that you can ordered off eBay is also under fire because many consumers think they're getting the real thing. In fact, the packages look real, the disks are realistic (I know people who come back from China with bootlegs that look very authentic, complete with DVD movies etc), but sometimes they turn out to be cheap VCD's or DVD's that don't play well in all machines.

Prescription drugs, well we can see where this can go bad. Not only the viagara that doesn't work, but perhaps when somebody depends on a medication and finds that it's only sugar pills (or the wrong medications).

My primary fear here, however, is that they aren't really going to crack down so much on the physical fakes, but just focus more on the movies/music filesharing, and put more legislation in place to block drugs order from places like Canada (which may be 100% legit pharmacuticals, but are busting the profits of US companies because they are regulated and much cheaper).